Publication details

Relaxing Underspecified Semantic Representations for Reinterpretation

Alexander Koller, Joachim Niehren, Kristina Striegnitz

Grammars 3(2/3):217-241, 2000

Type and sort conflicts in semantics are usually resolved by a process of reinterpretation, which introduces an
operator into the semantic representation. We elaborate on the
foundations of a recent approach to reinterpretation within a
framework for semantic underspecification. In this approach, relaxed
underspecified semantic representations are inferred from the
syntactic structure, leaving space for subsequent addition of
reinterpretation operators. Unfortunately, a structural danger
of overgeneration is inherent to the relaxation of underspecified
semantic representations. We identify the problem and distinguish
structural properties that avoid it. We furthermore develop
techniques for proving these properties and apply them to
prove the safety of relaxation in a prototypical
syntax/semantics interface. In doing so, we present some novel
properties of tree descriptions in the constraint
language over lambda structures (CLLS).